‘For your bookshelf’ archive

March 13: Calling all fans of sports photography

Do you have a discount store in your area called Five Below? It’s like a dollar store, except everything is priced $5 or less. The chain is based in Philadelphia. Everything there is a “close out,” so they don’t take returns at all. We stopped by our local Five Below last night, where I spotted something you should know about: [...]

Dec. 16, 2011: Cheap Christmas gift alert

Looking for a cheap but fun Christmas gift? Why not buy from a visual journalism colleague? — For that lover of the classic sounds of early rock ‘n roll, what could be a better stuffer than a fresh and detailed story of the last tour of Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and the Big Bopper? The Day the Music Died is [...]

Dec. 14, 2011: Cheap Christmas gift alert (1)

Looking for a cheap but fun Christmas gift? Why not buy from a visual journalism colleague? — Do you have a person on your shopping list who just loves to cook? Here’s the perfect gift for them: A cookbook by master cook and longtime cooking writer and editor Debbie Moose. Debbie has published four cookbooks, and each of them is [...]

Dec. 13, 2011: Cheap Christmas gift alert

Looking for a cheap but fun Christmas gift? Why not buy from a visual journalism colleague? — If you like literature — and most of us in the field of communications do — then you’ll go nuts over Writers Gone Wild: The Feuds, Frolics and Follies of Literature’s Great Adventurers, Drunkards, Lovers, Iconoclasts and Misanthropes. Writers Gone Wild was written [...]

Nov. 23, 2011: Calling all comic strip fans: Soon, you, too, can go Pogo (1)

Hitting bookstores right about… now… is a new collection of classic Pogo comic strips by Walt Kelly. Published by Fantagraphics books, this book collects the very first of Kelly’s syndicated Pogo strips, starting in May 1949 and running through the end of 1950. Also included are Sunday strips from that same period and Pogo strips from the New York Star [...]

Sept. 21, 2011: This goes to the top of my wish list (3)

I’m a huge fan of Art Spiegelman. And especially Maus, Spiegelman’s cartoon retelling of the Holocaust and a son’s struggle to understand his Holocaust-survivor father. Maus won a Pulitzer Prize in 1992, and rightfully so. It’s powerful work.   Previously, Spiegelman had been a big part of the underground comics movement of the late 1960s and early 1970s. But without [...]

Feb. 18, 2011: For all you Kindle users out there…

Do you recall this? The Summer Son is the fabulous new novel by Billings, Mont., Gazette copy desk chief Craig Lancaster — I wrote about it extensively back on Wednesday. Well, the Kindle-only version is on sale at this very moment at Amazon. For just 99 cents. Thanks to Megan Heaton for the tip.

Nov. 4, 2010: Meet Bill Peschel — longtime book lover, copy editor… and, now, published author

Nearly buried this week under the shuffle of election coverage and tea parties and such was the official release of a fun new book — one that literature lovers are sure to enjoy. The book is called Writers Gone Wild. It’s a collection of brief tales of authors, novelists, poets and journalists and some of the crazy, unbelievable and just [...]

Oct. 14, 2010: Sports photographer Vernon Biever dead at age 87

Longtime sports photographer Vernon Biever of Port Washington, Wis., died Wednesday night. He was 87. Journal Sentinel file photo — Who was Vernon Biever? One of the first official NFL team photographers, writes Amy Rabideau Silvers of the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel. He began photographing the Green Bay Packers — originally for the Sentinel — in 1941, as an 18-year-old college freshman [...]

Oct. 11, 2010: From the SND/Denver workshop: Order your own copy of ‘Ink’

Did you catch all the buzz about the tabloid that was produced during the Society for News Design’s annual workshop last month in Denver? Produced by three former Michigan State classmates — with illustration, graphics, photography and articles by a huge number of industry professionals — Ink was distributed to attendees Sunday, as they checked out of the hotel and [...]

Oct. 11, 2010: Chicago, as seen through the eyes of Tribune photographers

A new book to be released next month will feature photography by Chicago Tribune photographers. Tribune director of photography Robin Daughtridge writes: Tribune photographers, en route to “official” assignments, often stroll through the Loop and capture fleeting moments during peak light. Other times a photographer waits for hours for the split second when a runner bounds across a sun-bathed bridge. [...]